


watching the sun implode and not running

by headbuttingbears



Category: Demi Lovato (Musician), Jonas Brothers
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1910s, Alternate Universe - Circus, Angst, F/M, Family Drama, Friends to Lovers, Mutual Pining, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-04
Updated: 2018-10-04
Packaged: 2019-07-25 07:02:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16192517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/headbuttingbears/pseuds/headbuttingbears
Summary: "Nick, you can't hold me forever," she says with more humor than he thinks the situation merits.Why not?he wonders. | In 1913, Demi Lovato joins the Jonas family trapeze act.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Figured I should post this before either of them got hitched and I had to REALLY consider my life choices. References all kinds of stuff—some of it real, most of it not—takes nothing seriously, don't get mad at me it's super not worth it.
> 
> More like a soupçon of the 1910s than anything really in-depth. I just wanted to write about trapeze shit tbh. For obvious reasons, a no diabetes au. This would've been a very short fic otherwise.
> 
> Title from Yves Olade's "Skin."

They work a season together when they're sixteen, and Nick doesn't remember which Ringling brother introduces her but he remembers how she looks. Very tan for a girl—she mostly did outdoor performances in Texas up until then. When she takes off her hat, she reveals dark hair in a thick single plait; her brown eyes are bright and not too nervous as Ringling names each member of the Jonas clan and they all shake hands.

Nick can't tell at the time if she has a good grip—they barely clasp hands before Joe gets impatient and jostles him aside to meet his soon-to-be-latest conquest.

"It's not often I meet a star," Joe says in an stage whisper before kissing her hand. "If you weren't still on the rise I'd never be able to catch you."

Kevin, beside him, coughs to cover his laugh; Nick settles for rolling his eyes.

"You won't be anyway," Miss Lovato replies with a smile, and to Nick's surprise her gaze turns scrutinizing as it slides right off Joe to their father; Kevin; himself.

She's short. In her belted tunic dress with those loose sleeves it's hard to tell what her build is like, but he would guess not too willowy. Even back then, so young, she never seemed the waifish type. And she's alone, which amazes him on some level later on after hearing they're the same age, though he's been working the circuit long enough by then to know it isn't unusual.

"Catching me, that is," she says, and Joe finally laughs, Frankie joining in and missing the subtext like the idiot kid he is.

 

A month in he's imagining a new routine, journal open on his lap and pencil loose in his hand, when someone thumps down next to him on the lowest bunk in the sleeper compartment. Quieter there than anywhere else a mere three hours after another successful show.

"Are you awake?" Demi ("Please, don't call me Demetria, you sound like my mother") nudges his leg, bouncing slightly on the sagging mattress. "Nick? Don't ignore me."

"Who would dare," he mutters, opening his eyes and flipping his journal shut to lay on his thigh. Everyone's less formal on the train, and Demi's no different—her hair's loose, wavy against her back, just a blue ribbon keeping it out of her eyes. Worried eyes.

"Are you mad at me?" She looks away as soon as the words are out, down at his journal, briefly questioning, and then further afield. At Kevin's bed, though she wouldn't know it. When he doesn't answer immediately, she scoots back on the bed so her shoulders press against the wall like his, and says, "Because I know I said I'd do the double somersault, but I don't-"

"I'm not mad," he says at once.

They'd talked about her doing the double, if Demi cornering him one afternoon and demanding an explanation after he had yet another fruitless argument with his parents over the trick counts as talking about it. Practiced it whenever she could sneak it in, claiming an over-rotation whenever his parents protested, and Demi had been firmly on his side right up until the moment they were in the air and she'd come at him a second sooner than he'd expected. His aggravation had been fleeting, fear more than anything else, a rope burn drag of anxiety that lasted until his hands caught her wrists, and then all he'd felt was disappointment. Not anger.

Disappointment was sort of what he felt later when he'd gone to knock on the door to the compartment she was sharing with his mom. Went looking for an explanation from his co-conspirator and instead he found Joe's laughter, audible from the corridor.

"I _need_ those," Demi said, giggling too much to be scolding. "Seriously, give them back." Murmured something lower, and Nick had dropped his hand and backed away from the door.

"Really?" She's looking at him again, and in the muted light under the bunk he can see how she worries her cheek.

"Really," he says, and it's true. Even the disappointment's gone. Just resignation, and weirdly it's not about the trick.

What had he expected? Joe was Joe. And Demi…

She curls a lock around and around her finger as she waits, and it strikes him that her hair was up last he saw her.

"I get it," he continues, instead of asking what happened to her hairpins. "It's always easier during practice with the line, and it's not like we've been doing it-" and that's when his voice chooses to crack because of course, that's how it works. " _Practicing it_ for long, I mean," he corrects with a minimum of throat-clearing.

Demi doesn't laugh or tease him or anything. "I'll do it next time, I promise," she says, sticking her hand out, pinkie finger extended. Tips her head to the side when he just stares at her, waves her hand. "Pinkie swear, Nick. Next time I won't be scared. I'll do the double, and your parents will have an entire litter of kittens, and after we do it two or three more times they won't care if _you_ say you want to do it too."

The laugh leaps out of him like a clown from a barrel, and she grins as he hooks his pinkie around hers, all disgruntled thoughts of Joe's interference chased away by the way she said _next time_.

"I'm right, aren't I?" she says, and before he can bother denying it she pulls away and settles back next to him, nudging him as she fixes her skirt, smoothes it over her knees.

There's something about their proximity—her on the bed next to him, the low light, the memory of her giggling fresh in his mind—that makes him swallow. His little finger tingles; he pushes it into the gap between pages where they bend around the pencil.

Then she nods at his journal, "Show me what else you're working on. A triple like the Clarkonians?" and she still isn't teasing him.

The tingling goes away as he shows her.

 

The double is the reason their planned season is cut down to three months. Ringling—Mr. Charlie, most likely, he always had his ear to the ground—gets wind of what she does, how she turns it out like she's been doing it all her life, a double somersault followed by a one-and-a-half twist.

"I'm sure we'll see each other again," she says, fidgeting with the handles of her overstuffed carpetbag as they all wait for her train to board. Recalled by telegram back to New York, the quicker the better to star in Ringling's latest act at Madison Square Gardens. Moving up in the world fast, but they'd known that when she started with them.

"Don't be scared," he tells her when it's his turn for a hug goodbye and he feels her shaking just a little. _Nervous energy_ , she'd claimed once when she'd been trembling away on the platform next to him, gripping the bar and counting Mississippis before jumping.

" _You_ don't-" and whatever she's going to say is cut off by the train whistle screaming, the thick _chug_ of the wheels, and Joe tugs at her elbow. She steps away, shouldering her heavy bag easily, before she reaches back and Nick catches her hand by instinct, pulls her back in through the engine's billowing steam.

"You don't be scared either," she whispers into his ear, and then she's swinging away, into Joe's arms for a quick kiss his parents pretend not to see because she's leaving. On the train and gone. Poof.

Misses her already, and she never did get to see him do the double.

 

She isn't the first or only girl they add to the troupe temporarily, and far from the last, what with only his mother a permanent fixture until Danielle, but she-

Well, she wasn't around long enough to really merit comparison to the others.

"You missed your calling in ballet," he says to Selena one afternoon after a show, and the smile she aims solely at him is so pretty he feels it like a fall into the net. He doesn't have much practice there—with girls, that is, not falling. He still does plenty of that.

Selena's no Gibson girl, but she has a doll-like beauty that wins over everyone who sees her without fail. She learns their routines quicker than they did in the first place, her execution perfect; never complains, not even about Frankie getting into her cosmetics. Really, Nick's only source of concern is how light she is. Worries sometimes he'll forget he's holding her and drop her by accident, reassures himself she'd drift down like a feather and land unscathed.

Shame about her health.

Then there's Smiley Miley. Up for anything, constantly pushing everyone's limits—especially her hovering father-turned-manager's. Full twists then one-and-a-halfs, doubles, _why not add in a somersault?_ and _c'mon, Mister Jonas, I've done this a hundred times, a double roll into a full twist isn't gonna kill me_ , and Nick can barely keep up but he loves the challenge she poses as much as he hates it. Hates not knowing what trick she's going to throw during a performance until she's swinging back and forth on the bar, working up a head of steam, but loves it when he's there to help her pull it off.

"You just do it for the attention," he says one night after a show as he sits on a step in the train car's entrance and unwraps the bandages from his wrists. He'd felt her fingernails bite into the cloth when she'd gone for a full layout and he nearly missed catching her; couldn't blame her. Not with so many falls in her history. Everybody knows she won't last the year at the rate she's going, won't live to see her name splashed across the newspapers the way Demi's managed.

"No, you big grump, I do _this_ for the attention." Miley leans down to grab him by the face and plant one on him, and it almost doesn't work, but like everything else unexpected she manages it somehow. "I do the rest for fun," she says after, with a wild grin and her hands buried in his hair.

"Dying isn't fun." He winces at how much like his father he sounds, but she just tightens her grip on his curls and shakes his head side to side for him.

"It could be if you did it right," she says with a huge wink like some kind of movie starlet, and he thinks he's never understood a person less or envied them more. How she does what she wants without asking anyone's permission, never having to run her every thought past a committee, though she really should occasionally. At least give _him_ some kinda warning, he's the one catching her more often than not.

"I can see you thinking about it," she says, and he becomes very aware of how she's still in her costume when she steps closer, his knee sliding between her legs. "You get it now?"

"Not really," he admits, and she kisses him again before someone who sounds too much like his mother shouts and he lurches back, scraping his shoulder on the sun-warmed metal step, and Miley snorts at him and calls him a chicken.

 

He piles into the borrowed company truck with Kevin and Joe and they drive into muggy Newark to pick Demi up at the train station for her limited engagement with the Red Unit. She's waiting outside, standing next to a bench and clutching that hideous bag of hers that likely weighs a ton, and he recognizes her instantly from a distance by the way she fans herself with her straw hat. That delicate motion of her wrist.

"You don't write, you don't even send a postcard," Joe complains good-naturedly as he embraces her, and she laughs as he kisses her cheek. "You're all over the world without me and you let Management and the newspapers do the talking for you?"

"Oh, be quiet." She pushes him back with a hand at his chest and turns to Kevin, arms outstretched. "Can I hug the married man or will your wife be upset?"

"I won't tell her if you don't," he says, and rocks her back and forth once before releasing her, holds a hand flat above her head. "You've gotten so tall! Little Demi's all grown up."

"Don't you start either," she snaps back promptly as Kevin snickers with Joe, and Nick's the only one not laughing when she turns to him. "Nicholas." Her eyes dance as she toys with her necklace, the ring there.

"Hi," he says, hanging back. It's been four years, and she might not have gotten any taller but she's… different somehow. Her hair is up instead of down, a black swirl above a face that's lost some of its youthful roundness, and he wonders if it's only that. Wonders what she sees when she considers him, if he looks as changed, if that's why her expression's so pensive until he holds out his hand and she brushes it aside to hug him too.

 

New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts stream past as May rolls into June and Demi slips back into their lives like she never left. Like she was with them for three years instead of three months. She's no Selena, picking up their classic routines after a single refresher, and she's no Miley, taking every risk that comes her way. And she's definitely no Danielle, whispering in Kevin's ear about leaving the circuit the way his parents and Frankie already did nine months ago.

"I'm sorry about your mom," Demi says, sitting across from him in the dining car, smile flicking on and off like a spotlight when passing rousties greet her. She waited until dinner was over, until drinks were had—drinks they never had when their parents were around—and the newlyweds split and Joe, realizing he wasn't going to find whatever he was after with Demi, left to prowl the rest of the train for some entertainment. Waited until it was just him to ask about the elephant in the room.

There wasn't much to tell. She was trying a brand-new trick, the pulley broke during practice, the line went too slack too fast, and down into the net went Denise Jonas. Not her first hard fall, but Paul decided it was her last when she couldn't pick up a teacup with that hand.

"It's not a big deal. She's fine," Nick says with a shrug, sipping his gin. "I think her and Dad like staying in one spot. Living in a real house, and not one in Wisconsin. And Frankie never really liked the circuit. Not everyone's like you, globetrotter." Smirks when she makes a face, but it doesn't distract her for long.

"With your parents gone, who's…" Fidgets with that ring again, and it's not a big flashy thing. Just a slim gold band that he doesn't recall her having years ago, when Joe flirted with her and she flirted back. "Who's running the act?"

 _Is it you? Have you finally started calling the shots?_ Wonders if she remembers sitting next to him on his bunk, pouring over his journal full of ideas, tricks and sets and costumes, a whole tent's worth of diversions. Things he'd come up with in his idle moments between shows, stuck on the train when his parents weren't teaching him math or history or God's word, when his brothers were leaving him alone. To brood, they always said, and he'd let it go if it meant he'd get a quiet moment to work.

Demi never called it brooding whenever she caught him at it. Not like Miley had when she found him scribbling away, but then she was never interested in talking or dreaming together. At least not for long.

"Well, you know how it is," he says, turning his glass around and around in his hands as his face grows hot for no reason. "After Mom and Dad left, things were kind of… unsteady. They're good now, and I guess they think Kev's got a good idea of what the audience wants? Plus he's the oldest, which you already know, so it just didn't really make sense to upset that. When things are so… good." He said _good_ too many times.

In case he doesn't realize that, Demi arches an eyebrow. "Things are good?"

"Uh huh," he says, gulping down the rest of his gin so he doesn't choke on the agreement. The liquor washes away the urge to tell her about the shouting matches about Mom's fall, who was to blame, how Nick has all these _ideas_ , too many damn _ideas_ , Danielle standing in silent judgment off to the side when Kevin points to her and asks Nick if he's willing to risk her next time just to tempt a bigger crowd.

"So good we should celebrate with another drink." She's already up, out of her seat, taking his hand, and of course he follows her, and of course he tells her everything anyway.

 

"You know, sometimes I think you're the only one who understands me," he mutters later, each of them lying in a bunk. She's above him in Joe's, but he's not coming back tonight so Nick feels nothing at all about it.

The words drift up into the dark space between them, illuminated by the light that flickers through the window, weak from a passing town. He can't remember where they're supposed to be, but he also can't be bothered thinking too hard about it. Not when he can hear Demi sigh, the hem of her dress poking over the edge of the bunk bed all he can see of her.

"You're the only one who gets it. You know I would've done it if Mom hadn't insisted she-"

"Nick."

He stops before he can get started, swallowing thick and blinking his eyes hard like that'll help.

"Go to sleep," she says after a long pause, when the rocking train has done nothing to clear the tears from his eyes. So quietly he has to strain to make out her voice, rough like burlap from all the whiskey they shared. "Go to sleep."

He goes.

 

They're both still hungover the next day, but Demi says nothing as he goes from stake to stake, double- and triple-checking the knots that secure the net in place while the others finish stretching. She just pulls her arm tight over her chest, holds it there as he climbs the rope ladder to examine the pulleys for the line. From high above, her face is a pale heart turned up towards him from the ground.

Hanging upside-down for a couple of hours is going to be fucking fantastic, he thinks as he slides down the rope to the dirt, a rougher landing than he needed—it makes his brain jiggle in his skull.

"Okay?" she asks, arms raised so he can wrap the leather belt around her waist, over her blue practice costume. A simple question, but then she doesn't have to ask anything more complex like when exactly he started checking everything over or why he insists on being the one to buckle the straps in place, something normally done up on the platform by another flyer. She already knows when and why.

"Aw, I wanted to do that," Joe complains, snickering as Nick yanks hard on the line's ropes three times, testing them. "He gets to have all the fun."

"You'll have some too, don't worry," Demi says, patting Nick's arm once before he nods and she turns away. She's curvier than he remembers.

The line snaps tight when he misses her on the first somersault, the hiss of rope against wood loud overhead, and he holds his breath as she drops slowly down below him. Only exhales when her feet touch the net and the whole thing wobbles like a soap bubble kissing the water.

"Ta da!" she calls out, posing like a magician's assistant fresh out of a box, miraculously whole and unharmed despite all the swords plunged into it, and Joe claps, whistles from his spot on the platform while Nick swings back and forth on the bar, wishing for more chalk on his palms.

He doesn't get it, and he clearly doesn't need it because the next time he's ready for her. Catches her with barely a jolt, her hands locking smoothly around his wrists at the same time his do hers, and he looks down into her face, her brown eyes as fearless as her smile, and he stops being scared of anything just for an instant.

 

She does the double she's so famous for, and she leaves the catch with a clean double twist now instead of a single so it's no work for her to talk Joe into trying Nick's latest idea—the one where they go tandem on the swinging trapeze and she somersaults off his back for Nick to catch her. Danielle tried once and swore it off ever after, which was about when Nick came to the not-nearly-private-enough conclusion that she was too skittish to ever be a _real_ aerialist.

"When were you planning on telling _me_ you were gonna do that?" Kevin asks after the show. It went off without a hitch, but it wasn't what they'd been doing for the last ten years so of course there's a problem.

Nick, abandoned by Demi and Joe in favor of sniffing out drinks and popcorn, unravels his wrist wraps and smiles at his brother. "To be honest, never," he says, in too good a mood to really think about what he's saying. "I knew, she knew, and Joe knew. The only people who needed to know all knew."

"You don't think I needed to know." Kevin doesn't phrase it like a question, but Nick hears it like one anyway. Hears a lot more questions rattling inside it, hitting the sides like peas in the cup. _What else are you planning on doing without telling me first_ and _why can't you just do what we all agreed to do_ and _when is it going to sink in_ you're _not in charge?_

"Not really," he says, dropping the cotton wrapping on his bunk in time for Kevin to step in close as he adds, "The only thing you need to know is that we didn't miss you at practice, but then it's not like you mattered."

 

"Give," he says, snapping his fingers in front of Demi's face, and she rolls her eyes but passes over her bottle of beer.

"I'm pretty sure the whole state could hear you two," she says as he drinks what's left of her beer. "You want to talk about it?"

"What's there to talk about?" He sets the empty bottle on the counter and waves at the barkeep. It wasn't hard to find her—the closest bar to the circus grounds is always a safe bet where Joe's concerned after the time the train left without him, and Joe was the one who'd driven them over. His brother, he saw as soon as he walked in, is draped over some townie, surely seconds away from a marriage proposal.

 _Or some other proposal,_ he thinks, watching him whisper in the woman's ear. There's a reason Joe prefers not to drink in the train's bar car; too hard to love 'em and leave 'em when you see them every day.

"I don't know, we could talk about your feelings or something?" Demi accepts her fresh beer but doesn't drink it, playing with her necklace. "That would be a start."

"What's with the ring?" he asks instead of telling her what he told Kevin. Yelled at Kevin, really, and it wasn't anything she couldn't guess at already. How bored he is with it all, how he's wasting his time, his talent, his goddamn ideas. How tired he is of being blamed for what had happened when it wasn't his fault. How it's past time he went his own way.

Doesn't think about any of that as he thinks about Joe and his current girl instead and says, kind of meanly, "You get married or somethin' while you were off seeing the world? Is that why we never see you in the off-season?"

It's a worse joke than he realizes because she releases the ring at once to cross her arms, lean on the counter. Her blouse sleeves pull tight over her biceps as she scrubs both hands over her face.

"Demi-"

"We're not actually married," she says, and he sets his bottle down because he feels like he might drop it otherwise. "I was working in Texas, and Wilmer knows— _knew_ —my father-" It all pours out of her at once, the story of how she met this incredible acrobat down south two years ago by chance, their grand romance, and he wonders if she's been waiting for him to ask all this time. If maybe she was hinting at it by making a point of playing with her ring—her _wedding_ ring—in front of him, hoping he'd catch on or get curious or something. Anything.

He grips the neck of the bottle with a clammy hand and can't understand why his stomach turned over. Like he's tipped back on the swing too fast, missed the ropes.

She married a man named _Wilmer_?

"He's really fab," she continues, picking at the beer label with her fingernails. "He really gets me, you know?" She glances over at him, lashes fluttering, before she looks back down at the cheap paper she's shredding.

"I can imagine," he says. It sounds normal, not at all like he had to take a slow deep breath after having it knocked out of him. Finally hit the net, time to get back up. Climb. Don't remember how they got drunk together the night before and he told her the same thing. "Why didn't he come with you?" he asks instead of reminding her. _Go to sleep, Nick._ He's an idiot.

"He's under contract with a circus in Mexico or he would've," she says with a smile that doesn't stick around for long. "You'd like him. He's inventive too, he's always trying new things."

Hits him how young she sounds, and she's sitting on his left instead of his right, and they're not on the train, but it's like four years have disappeared and she's asking him if he's mad at her.

How can he be?

"I'm really happy for you," he says, and means it as much as he had back then. _I'm not mad._ "Here's to finding someone who understands," and holds out his bottle.

There's so much relief in her face, in her careful smile as she clinks her bottle against his. He orders another round and makes sure to call it celebratory instead of medicinal.

 

It becomes a pattern for all of them as they go town to town: practice; perform; Demi and Joe make themselves scarce while Nick fights with Kevin and, with growing frequency, Danielle; drinks with Demi in a townie bar until he forgets how unhappy he is. Never takes long, and it never lasts. Tends to fade away the moment it occurs to one or both of them that they need to get back to the train before they're left behind.

He can't blame the booze for what happens, and he's not about to blame Demi. Not for how she says during their last night together in Albany, watching them corral the elephants, "Why don't you just… leave?" and he thinks about it. Really thinks about it beyond the idle daydreams of a kid who's tired of hearing no all the time. _No, that's too dangerous for you_ or _no, that's not how we do it_ or _no, try this instead, isn't that better?_

Can't blame anyone else for how he gets sloppy, leaves a telegram out on his bunk for any Nosy Nancy to find without needing to look too hard. They're back in New York for July, barrelling towards Niagara Falls, and the windows are open when Kevin waves it at him, paper fluttering in the stiff breeze.

"What's this?" He slaps it hard against Nick's chest, crinkling against his shirt.

"I think it's a telegram," Nick says, reading it over again as though he doesn't have it memorized. Since Demi's left he's been so bored he could cry, all but sleepwalking through performances, and the telegram was the first slice of genuine excitement he'd had since her departure for points west.

_Nicholas Jonas, en route to Buffalo, Care of Conductor, Ringling Brothers Red Unit_

_Bold ideas stop Meet Hotel Lafayette Buffalo stop Breakfast at ten stop Discuss prospects._

_C Ringling_

"No shit it's a telegram. What's he mean by 'ideas' and 'prospects'?" Kevin's arms look particularly thick when he crosses them over his chest the way he does now, glowering. "You know full well if it concerns the act we all-"

He folds the telegram in half, in half again, as he thinks about explaining. How he chanced on a meeting in Rochester with Mr. Charlie shortly after dropping off Demi, told him about his desire to try something new, something daring. His desire to pack in a war-weary audience and give them something they'd never seen before.

Thinks about how Mr. Charlie had nodded and hummed, clapped him on the shoulder and said, "What about your family, Mr. Jonas? I know how you feel, coming from a horde myself, but you only get one. See what they say while I think about it."

Thinks about telling Kevin how his heart sank then because he knew precisely what they would say. _Will_ say. Slips the telegram into his pants pocket as he comes to a decision. "It doesn't concern you or anyone else. Just me, and last I checked you're my brother, not my boss. Not my father."

And just like that they're on full boil, every petty resentment and complaint and frustration bubbling over, burning them both as they scream at each other. Insults and bitter truths, old history never buried, _you wouldn't know an original thought if it fell on your fat head_ and _you should know all about falling, you're the reason Mom got hurt_ and Kevin outweighs him but he's always been faster. His reflexes have always been sharper, his eye for another person's movement better, the way they hold themselves or shift position, so it's no effort at all to avoid Kevin's thrown punch and toss out one of his own. It's a relief, if he's being honest.

"What in God's name is- Guys, stop!" Joe shouts, trying and failing to shove them apart while they put on their own dog fight, snapping and snarling and scrabbling together in the narrow space of the sleeper car. "For Christ's sake-" and he catches an elbow with his face, reeling, before he shoves his way back in between them, blood splattering as he pummels them both indiscriminately.

Nick can feel the bruises rising as he slumps back, panting, against the bunk he's occupied for most of his life, and stares at his family. Kevin doesn't look any better than he feels—split lip, red cheek and forehead, and he's rubbing his jaw until they make eye contact and he drops his hand, rockets up to his feet from his seat on his old bunk.

"If you think-" Kevin starts as he slides the door open, not looking at either of them. Shakes his head once, a tight motion to match his tightly-hunched shoulders, and whatever he was going to say, threat or warning or plea, is lost as he slams the door shut behind him.

Nick clasps his sore hands together, shaking the way they never have before, and looks up at Joe, who's standing at the far end of the compartment, slouching against the windows with his head tipped back. There's blood streaming down his face from his nose, bright as a clown's face paint dumped down the front of his shirt.

He can't think what to say to him.

There's no real silence on a train—the machine rocks around them, the wind hissing through the top window, and Joe's breathing is a wet whistle while Nick thinks. And thinks. And thinks.

And then Joe straightens up, sniffs hard and winces, and leaves without a word, the door thumping when he slides it shut after him.

Nick flexes his aching hands and hopes he hasn't broken anything. That would be disastrous for a catcher.

 

Demi meets him at the train station in Madison. Tips her head to the side as she looks at him with a sly little smile, touches her hair and reminds him how short he cut his. Then the moment's over as she launches herself at him for the sort of enthusiastic hug he'd expect from family. A sister maybe.

"I'm so glad to see you," she says, and, "This is going to be fantastic," as she takes his hand, and, "Everyone's going to love you," while he slings his luggage into the back of the truck and they get in the cab.

He doesn't once interrupt her stream of happy chatter, just lets her catch him up on all the Blue Unit gossip, the crazy things she's seen since they were last together. Only pays attention to half of it, but she wants to talk to him, and given how the sting of his family's ostracism continues to be a fresh slap across his face, he'll take it happily.

Besides, Demi's always been the most interesting person he knows. If she wants to talk about the price of circus peanuts, they can talk about the price of circus peanuts.

But what she doesn't talk about-

"Where's Wilmer?" he says, arm hanging out the window, hand tapping a rhythm against the hot panel of the passenger door. "I thought I'd be meeting him at last."

She doesn't falter as she turns the wheel, hand over hand. "He's in Mexico."

"Still?"

"I told you, he's got a contract. He doesn't have much time," she says immediately, blinking shiny eyes as the sun hits them. "It's complicated, doll, don't worry your pretty little head about it." Reaches out blindly to rub her hand over his much-shorter hair. "Have you talked to Joe?"

He bats her hand away and ignores her attempt to deflect, asks, "Am I ever going to meet this guy?"

But then the collection of buildings that's Ringlingville rises in the distance and she doesn't have time to answer him.

 

He spent the last eighteen months among strangers, though in the small world of the circus no one's ever really a stranger for long. Removed by one or three or five degrees at most, _you know them?_ and _yeah, we worked the eastern seaboard together for a season_ , and before you know it you're pals. But after two decades surrounded by family at every turn, it was… an adjustment. Not an entirely unwelcome one, but not an easy one either. At least he was busy the whole time.

"Forget everything you've done before," he says to Demi's crew a couple of days after he's arrived and gotten settled, a half-dozen sturdy-looking men standing on the dirt next to the net in the practice tent. "It's all going to change. It's going to be new, it's going to be different from what everyone else is doing." She's standing behind them, hands clasped, and if he lacked for confidence before he doesn't after she gives him a peppy grin, sixteen again in a broad flash of white teeth.

They spend the off-season learning the new routines, and with Demi on the platform across from him it's like Nick can breathe freely in a way he hasn't for years. He can check and double-check every knot, he can push for another twist or a tighter somersault, and nobody questions him. They didn't when he worked a stint on the other side of the Rockies with the Bailey lot, but that was different. Lonelier.

Nothing at all like Demi hollering across the tent to him, "How about a double into a triple?"

"Can you do it?" he yells back, snorting when he sees her vigorous nod. "Prove it."

"Come out here and I will," she says, the man at her side already laying the riser for her to step onto, and what can he do but take the dare, clap his hands with the chalk bag, and trade places with her normal catcher?

All his performing for months has been behind the scenes, teaching other people tricks and new techniques he learned by trial and error. As he swings out over the net, working up some speed before he tips over, catches the ropes with his legs, it comes rushing back that he's only been doing this for so long because he loves it. He chafed under his parents' rules, fought with Kevin, because he loves it.

 _Leaving was never a possibility_ , he admits as Demi jumps off the platform, body fully extended as she swings back and forth on the trapeze, pumping her legs. Then she hurtles off the bar, spinning the tightest double somersault he's seen since the last time they worked together, and of course he misses the catch. Forgot how fast she could go.

She hoots as she slowly glides down the twenty feet to the net, the line hissing up behind her, and when she lands on her feet she drops a curtsey as everyone but Nick claps. "That's your freebie," she says, pointing up at him, and he crosses his heart as he hangs upside-down above her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Flyer = person who performs tricks
> 
> Catcher = person who catches the flyer
> 
> Belt = a simple harness worn by flyers that has safety lines attached
> 
> Riser = board or pole kept on the platform, placed horizontally between platform supports when the flyer needs extra height to launch a trick


	2. Chapter 2

In the middle of the off-season, Ringlingville puts on an exhibition to celebrate the merger with Barnum & Bailey. Not for public consumption—just for them, for the circus folks. For the newly-expanded family. A chance for everyone to be part of the audience for a change, to eat snacks and marvel at the latest acts and clap for each other before they inevitably divvy up onto trains and disappear to opposite sides of the country.

Nick has a blurry set of childhood memories of watching circus acts over the years, typically from off-stage. The Jonas clan preferred to return to their roots in Jersey rather than winter in Wisconsin, but this year that's not an option for him. Finds himself instead sitting in the stands with a carton of popcorn, as foreign a seat as a desk in a red clapboard schoolhouse would be. Less so that afternoon with Demi beside him, laughing at the clowns and constantly grabbing at his arm to catch his attention, the way Frankie did. Like there's any question of it—no matter how different the act is from his own specialty, he can't help but analyze it. Take apart what people do and wonder what could be adapted for the air, what could add to his performance.

"Oh, you'll like this," Demi murmurs to him, and nudges him with her shoulder as a magician steps into the ring, bowing and gesturing to his assistant. "I heard he's got this floating trick nobody can figure out, it's fantastic."

She's right, and it is, but for once Nick doesn't try to unravel how it's done. He watches, wide-eyed, as the assistant waves one graceful arm below and above the table to prove the lack of wires before hopping up to sit down on it. Raises one shapely leg, then the other; lies back, crossing her arms over her chest and shedding a couple of feathers from her costume in the process.

"Her name's Olivia, in case you're wondering."

"Huh?" Everyone's clapping; Nick joins in belatedly, glancing around before staring back at the center circle, where the magician—The Great Whozit or Whatever—takes his assistant's hand as they bow. He has no memory of their act, but it seems to have been a hit.

"The boxjumper," Demi says, pinching his arm and rocking up from the bench to her feet. "C'mon, we should go get ready, we're on soon."

They shuffle their way through the audience as the ringleaders strut and continuously one-up each other, the smells of butter and sawdust all around them, the waterproofed tent with its lingering odor of wax mixed with gasoline. Demi links her arm through his and hurries him along, past other performers looking for seats or getting ready, and he slips free when they near the magician and his assistant.

Olivia, Demi said her name is, and he calls it to her, pivoting in place as she passes him. "I liked- You were really great," he says, slipping his hands in his pockets, shoulders back.

"Thanks." With her costume still on, a frothy confection that would never fly outside the tent, she's a lot to take in. The heeled shoes don't help, though he suspects she'd still be taller than himself without them. "I'd say 'break a leg' but that's for actors, isn't it?"

"I won't mind if it's coming from you," he says, walking backwards, certain he's about to stumble into something but willing to risk it if it means not looking away, not missing when she smiles, eyelashes fluttering as her eyes trace down his body.

"Break a leg, then." Sweeps her brown hair back as she turns, before she peeks over her bare shoulder at him and blows a kiss. Hurries away, disappearing past the stands, as if surprised at herself.

"Hurry it up, Casanova," Demi says with an exasperated grimace as she grabs him by the suspenders and forcibly turns him around, ignoring his protests as she hustles him towards the rest of the aerialists changing into leotards behind screens. "We've got a show to put on."

He doesn't stop scanning the crowd for Olivia's face as he stands on the platform, waiting his turn while Demi does the first chunk of her act. Doesn't push away the memory of her embarrassed smile until he sees Demi step up on the riser across the way, her usual catcher landing heavily next to him, and then it's Nick's turn. Then he's all business, the stage nerves he rarely suffers from disappearing with a puff of chalk, and he doesn't think about anyone else other than Demi, swinging towards him.

 

The rest of the off-season is rendered down into two distinct layers: work and Olivia.

Early morning runs and workouts, mid-morning training, afternoons spent tweaking routines or trying new tricks, and throughout the day he wonders if the costumes should be redone, if the band would riot if he asked again for different music.

Demi throws up her hands at the mere suggestion. "You've already changed it three times," she says, and stomps off, muttering something uncharitable under her breath.

That leaves evenings, nights, Fridays and weekends to see Olivia. He waits by one of the mid-sized buildings where the magicians store their boxes and tanks, enduring the eyeballing from the Pinkerton-wannabes standing guard until she emerges at last. She has her own practicing to do, and he has to promise at first to have her back by a decent hour before she lets him take her into town, but she stops insisting after a couple of dates.

He misses Joe then: when he's driving them into Baraboo, Olivia sitting next to him in the truck as he searches for conversational topics. Should he ask more about her life before she joined up with Bailey? Is talking about work at all the wrong thing to do? Maybe she gets enough shop talk on a daily basis. Surely she has other interests, dreams. Joe would know what to say, he was the one who knew how to talk to women, or he could always ask Demi later—

"No, no, first you have to tell me what you'd do if you weren't in the circus," she says with a laugh, "Spill already." She pushes at his shoulder and he shifts his grip on the steering wheel, hands sweating the way they never have before as he tries to answer a question he's never considered before.

He smooths them over his pant legs every time he gets out of the truck, praying they'll be dry when he gets her door and helps her out and her hand lingers in his, and she insists they stroll the main drag and talk rather than go straight into the theater. More often than not they miss whatever show they mean to see, talking and taking in the spring air, holding hands.

"What?" she asks one Saturday afternoon. Sitting in a tree-sheltered spot by the river with a basket of sandwiches, some beer, and her hands had distracted him. He was telling her how he ended up a catcher instead of a flyer, but it doesn't matter now.

"You have the softest hands I've ever seen," he says, cupping one, turning it over so he can look at her palm. She has calluses, of course, but in different places than he's used to, and not nearly to the same degree. No, her fingertips are softer than any fall he's taken when she trails them over his cheek, and he wonders if she minds that his hands are far from smooth when he cups her face and kisses her; when he slides them up under her blouse; when she guides one between her legs.

 

"Oh, look at that. Someone had a good weekend," Demi says from behind him, voice rough as her hand when she lightly slaps his neck as she passes, too fast for him to dodge. There's no hiding the hickey low on his throat when he's in a leotard for practice, and she's far from the first or only person to comment on it, but that doesn't stop him from blushing or dropping his head to hide the smile that lingers at the memory of how exactly he got that particular hickey.

"Did _you_?" he asks once he's got control of his face again, carrying on with stretching while she flops down in the dirt across from him with a sigh that could blow down the big top. "What did you get up to?" and that question's as pointless as his lingering blush when she ignores him to extend first one leg, then the other.

As they both reach for their toes his eyes lock on that gold ring of hers. Swinging on the chain like a mentalist's pocket watch, and he can't look away. Four days, six if she left Thursday night and came back Monday morning—was that enough time to get to Mexico? Maybe Texas if she timed it right…

"How's Wilmer?"

"None of your beeswax," she says, shoving the ring under the neck of her leotard as though he can't make out the shape of it through the tight material. Dust follows her up as she scrabbles to her feet, makes a token show of stretching her shoulders out before she sets off for the ladder, forcing him to catch up.

 

Rain follows them from Wisconsin to New York, lingering over their month-long set at Madison Square Gardens, and it fits his mood so perfectly he can't muster up any complaints.

_I know there's always something new to see, but without you I just don't-_

"What're you doing back here?" Demi flops down on the bunk next to him, leaning over to see what he's writing and frowning when he instinctively flips his journal closed over the letter. "Are you working on something? You should've told me."

"No, nosy," he says, muffling a sigh at the glassy-eyed sight of her. Three shows a day, staying on the train rather than in a hotel, the incessant bad weather—Demi isn't typically the type to grow surly, but the circumstances aren't making it easy on her. Especially not when he's refused repeatedly to go out looking for fun with her the way he used to, but judging by the boozy smell of her she's found it without him.

"Then what're you up to? Tell me," she says, reaching for his journal, and he sets it on the other side of the bed, by his hip.

"I'm writing to Olivia," and he wonders at how her face falls until something like her stage smile settles into place and she reaches across him. "Stop it-"

"Geez, I just wanna see," she says, grabbing for his journal, performance-ready grin grown fixed. "C'mon, lover boy, let me read it. I can give you some tips, I get all kinds of swoon-y letters-"

"From Wilmer?" His grip was light on her wrist, her shoulder as she shoved playfully at him before he spoke. It tightens when she shoves him back on the bed, harder than he's ready for, and his head bangs against the wall, her weight sprawling over his lap, hair mussed.

She goes without a struggle when he pushes her away again, turns her attention to rubbing her wrist and not looking at him. "Whatever, have fun brooding," which she's never said before, and certainly not like that. Says it rather than answer his first question, or his second question about whether she's okay, and she only pauses at the door to toss over her shoulder, "Say hi to her for me," before she leaves.

Then he does sigh, inhales the lingering scents of perfume and whiskey, and it's a long time before he goes searching for his mislaid pencil to finish his letter.

 

The rain lifts eventually but that's the only improvement.

 _Here we are in Pennsylvania… New York… Massachusetts… wish you were here too._ Nick struggles for anything new he could put in his letters that he hasn't said already, anything worthwhile, but there's nothing at all. Wants to tell her he misses her worse than he ever missed his family, but that feels like too much to admit, true though it is.

He'd ask Demi's advice, but…

He would. But he doesn't.

Instead he goes around and around in his letters the same way the train circles New England for three months. Grapples with this foreign boredom, his longing for someone else's company, and honestly he doesn't have to talk to Demi about his problems because he has Olivia to understand everything.

 _You've been there loads of times before, haven't you? Practically every year. Maybe that's why you feel so let down—nothing's changed but you. Not to mention the moment you arrive you're already getting ready to leave, so even if something_ did _change you wouldn't get to find out._

_If only we could do things on our own time, instead of sticking to someone else's schedule._

He thinks about that a lot when he watches the countryside speed by and tries to calculate how far away California is; when they stretch their legs at yet another familiar whistle stop; when he's wrapping the life belt around Demi's waist.

"What?" he asks as he buckles it.

She's staring, eyes glittering. "Nothing," she says, which isn't the least bit helpful, so he ignores it to test the line with a couple of hard yanks. They hardly need it—most of the shine has come off the new routine he was once so excited about, and now it feels as well-tread as anything he ever did with his family all those years.

Even so, he tests the line.

 _This is going to be fantastic_ , he remembers Demi promising when he first arrived, but it doesn't feel that way when he waits on the platform for his cue. Scratches his shoulder and watches her fly through the air, a cutaway twist that's too sloppy to be a full, and it's only as he trades places with the other catcher that he realizes something.

He's _bored_.

"In your own time, Jonas," she calls over to him, sparking uneasy laughter from the rest of the crew, and he resists the urge to snap something back like _if only_. Instead he tips over backwards where he's been sitting on the trapeze. He's holding things up with his sour mood, though he forgets why after her hands lock around his wrists when he catches her and they swing back and forth in mid-air together.

 

Kansas in August is more of the same but hotter.

"Do you ever think about doing something else?" he asks Demi, standing next to him on the platform at Fort Wayne station. He has to squint to see her in the already-fierce morning sunlight, finds her largely unchanged from the last time he saw her. Taking a bow before an applauding audience in Ohio two days earlier, walking away and disappearing into the night the way he's come to expect. Sees her picture in the local newspapers more often than he sees her in person now.

She shades her bloodshot eyes with her hands as she looks up at him, lips parting. Almost expects her to say _with all this? never_ , but she pulls a face instead and issues a flat denial. Tacks on "What're you talking about?" for good measure.

He shrugs, wondering why he bothers. Or why _she_ bothers—her drinking hints at a deeper understanding of what he means than she obviously wants to admit to, and she's still at it weeks later in Oklahoma. Mistimes the somersault during practice and he barely catches her.

"I thought you were a pro, Nicky," she growls, clinging to him and hefting her weight up a bit so they can each get a better grip. "You're getting careless."

She's sliding; not enough chalk. "Funny, I was thinking the same about you," he says, the whiskey on her breath making him dizzy where a lifetime of hanging upside-down fails. Grimaces when her fingers dig in hard—he's going to bruise at the rate she's going. "Can you make the twist or do you want me to drop you?"

"God, I wish you would," she says, and there's nothing joking in her expression, nothing friendly about her smile, and they're at a stand-still when he lets her go, the line rasping loudly as she drifts down to the net.

 

 _I don't even know what we're fighting about_ , he writes before he decides he shouldn't be telling Olivia about his now-daily spats with Demi. Tears up the letter to write something else, something about how very flat Oklahoma is; the tornado he saw in the distance; the myriad of shows they've done. How much he's looking forward to seeing her again at the end of the season. How he can't wait to hold her.

Writes not a word about Demi losing her footing on the rope ladder the night before, skipping rehearsals, avoiding him, but can he honestly say he isn't avoiding her as well? Nothing about how back when they were younger, Demi always liked to go out after a show and have a look at the city of the day, have a couple of drinks, a dance or two with whatever local caught her eye. Innocent stuff he enjoyed as well, certainly not worth worrying over. Not like he does now.

Their last show in the state, onto Texas tomorrow, and from where he's hanging on the trapeze he can see how she wobbles and clutches at the shoulder of the flyer next to her as she steps up onto the riser, and doubt cracks through him sudden as heat lightning as she leaps off the platform.

Back and forth, back and forth, both of them working up the necessary momentum, getting the timing exactly right for when she lets go of the bar and tucks herself tight into the double somersault the way she has a hundred times before. The audience could be screaming below them and he'd never hear it for how his blood is booming in his head, and he's so certain he's going to miss her that when he does catch her he laughs out loud, Demi joining in as applause roars up towards them.

"We need to talk," he says to her hours after the show, after they've all boarded for the nighttime journey and he's received Olivia's telegram and read it five times. Stands just inside the door of Demi's private compartment on the train. Only the best for the star of the center circle's air, he figures, taking in the clothes tossed over the bed and sofa, the empty bottles littering the table and vanity, papers—telegrams, letters, torn envelopes—scattered around the room, and he revises his opinion. Maybe it would do her some good to share.

Repeats himself when she doesn't acknowledge him, too busy massaging lotion into her hands. Blisters from the trapeze that threaten to turn into rips.

"What do _you_ think we need to talk about?" Wipes the excess lotion off her fingers onto the back of her hand before she picks up the tumbler from the vanity and drains it, sets it down with a click between the mostly-empty bottle and a silver-backed hairbrush. "I'm so excited to hear what your latest and greatest idea is." She twists around in her seat, chin resting on the chair back as she smirks up at him and waits.

A slew of things jump up and down in his mind, begging to be picked, to be the first cannonball that shoots out of his mouth. He could ask when she started drinking so hard, when she was last sober, what the hell she's doing. A slip on the ladder today, a missed twist tomorrow—how soon before it's a fall from the platform, and not to a safe landing on the net?

He could ask her, but he knows she'd only deny it, turn it back on him—the reason she's so bruised. Who's been missing their catches? Who else has been careless? Who else has made it obvious they don't give a damn anymore?

They'd fight, and it would be like fighting with Kevin all over again, and they've known each other for so long that it would never go any differently. They'd snap and snarl and hurt each other and he…

He doesn't want to leave again.

 _Why don't you just leave?_ Demi never meant leave the circus. Not like Olivia does every time.

"Well? Spit it out already," she says, brown eyes shiny and hard, and her reflection shows her hair in a messy bun low against her neck. When he hesitates again, she whirls around in her chair to face the mirror, robe shifting and revealing a glimpse of tan shoulder, gold necklace chain, before she jerks it back in place. "Just say whatever you're gonna say and leave."

_Nicholas Jonas, en route to Fort Worth, Care of Conductor, Ringling Brothers Blue Unit_

_Not returning to Wisconsin stop Staying in California stop Please come._

_Olivia_

There's a clatter when she fumbles her hairbrush, knocks some wadded-up papers to the ground and sends the empty glass soaring off the vanity, and she swears as it rolls miraculously unbroken over the floorboards, halting when it hits the toe of his shoe.

"Really, if you want to go, just go," she murmurs instead of stretching for it, fidgeting with the handle of the hairbrush. "I know you want to, I can tell."

Doesn't ask how she can be so sure; she was there more than a year ago, witnessed the lead-up to when things last fell apart for him.

Her lotion left smears on the glass; it's slick under his fingers when he picks it up, covers the distance in a couple of strides to set it on her vanity, away from the dangerous edge. "I'm not going to leave," he says. "I'm just…" Shakes his head, plucking her hairbrush from her hand. No fight in him as he gestures with it, but she doesn't turn back around the way he wants, and he has to look down at her drawn face as he asks, "Haven't you ever missed anyone before? Don't you miss Wilmer?"

"I haven't missed Wilmer once in my entire life," she says, and he feels like the stupidest man on Earth when she pulls him down by his shirt front until he's close enough to kiss.

God help him but he lets her. Only for a second or five, not so long at all, but he lets her and that's enough. Pries her fingers loose from his shirt and ends up holding her slick hand. "Demi-"

"I'm sorry," she says, leaning up to kiss him again, and "Please don't leave me," she whispers against his lips, and "I can't do this without you," as she clings to him, and it's wrong. Olivia's telegram is burning a hole in his pocket while Demi kisses him and he lets her. Lets her waste time trying to convince him when his mind's already made up until her ring catches the light and his attention, and he pulls away at last.

"I already said I'm not going to, you didn't need to do that," he says, the only response he can manage to sneak past the guilt choking him, and she sits down hard on her chair as he licks his lips and steps back. Her whiskey on his tongue, her hairbrush in his tingling hand. "Turn around."

"Don't lie to me," she says, but she's no Miley. Does as she's told, chewing her lip as he takes out her few remaining hairpins with less enthusiasm than his brother ever had for the job. "I can tell-" Quiets when he says her name again, eyes flicking up to catch his in the mirror before she lowers them, cheeks reddening.

"You're my friend," he says, voice steadier than it's ever been as he carefully brushes her hair out. It's much darker than Olivia's. "You're all the family I've got left. I don't want to throw that away. Do…" Lowers the hairbrush, her hair laying silky against his flat palm, and it doesn't occur to him to worry about what he'll tell Olivia when he asks, "You get it, don't you?"

"Of course," she says, head bowed, twisting the ring around and around on the chain before she drops her hands to her lap and smiles up at his reflection, her innocence surely as much a manipulation as her prior show of desperation. "You know I always understand whatever crazy thing you come up with."

 

A week later they reach San Antonio.

 _There's only two months left, I don't want to blow my contract. I'll come to Santa Barbara after, straight from Georgia, and we'll talk then,_ he writes.

_It's not so far away._

"Can I talk to you?" Demi asks, automatically putting him on his guard, but before he can reply she notes the keys he was bouncing in one hand, the envelope in the other. "Are you going into town? Can I come? I need a lift," and she's hurrying ahead to the trucks parked behind the big tent, skirt fluttering in the dry breeze, leaving him to jog after her.

She doesn't say a word during their ride from the circus grounds to the post office, where he drops off his letter, or to the greengrocer's for the produce he agreed to pick up in exchange for borrowing the truck. Silent the whole way, which worries him almost as much as her drinking did, and he glances at her now and then only to find her staring out the window.

He's afraid to pry—they stopped sniping at each other after that night, hugged it out in the end the way he never had with his brothers. Pushes away all the other things that don't matter, like the way her mouth fit against his, and is grateful instead for a second chance. Every fall means a climb back up.

"Do you want to get something to eat?" he asks when they pass a restaurant, his stomach reminding him they missed breakfast, and she shakes her head.

Pauses.

"After we go to-" pulls a very crumpled telegram from her pocket, kin to the ones he saw on her vanity, and smooths it out over her thigh. "'The Menger Bar,'" she reads from it, brow wrinkling as she shrugs, but he's already turning the wheel.

Pulls in close to the curb, the grand hotel across the street, but when he goes to kill the engine she stops him, her hand on his quick as a carnival barker's.

"Just wait here, I'll be- Oh hell," she mutters, looking past him, and the passenger door creaks as she slips out to walk briskly across the street towards the hotel where a man stands by the entrance, lighting a cigarette.

He flicks the match away, straight black hair shining as he ignores the glare from the doorman and grins at Demi. Wraps an arm around her in a friendly hug, attempts a kiss that doesn't land. Nick's eyes narrow at how she doesn't reciprocate, how she puts space between them, holding something out to the man who must be Wilmer. The Colombian acrobat who dazzled her so many years ago, who bought her bouquets and serenaded her, who talked her into marriage after a month of sweet romance.

The reason he never saw her in the off-season.

The man she never missed.

Nick hooks his arm over the door and watches openly as they talk, the October wind blowing away their words before they can reach him. Beats a rhythm against the hot metal panel as Demi holds out her clenched hand again and Wilmer shakes his head, waves his cigarette. Points at her, at the horizon, and finally at Nick before he shoulders past her, heading towards the truck.

Nick's hand stills, palm flat against the door's exterior, as Demi grabs at Wilmer's arm. Shows some of that physical strength he's grown up knowing she possesses and makes the doorman shift like a nervous horse, but Wilmer lets her drag him to a halt. Shoves her fist against his chest, pressing something glinting there that he gropes to catch while she takes off across the street, not looking back as Wilmer calls her name. Her full name—Nick forgot _Demi_ 's just a nickname.

"Okay?" Nick asks her, keying the engine over as she hops back in, shuts the door with a bang.

"Yeah, yeah," on the edge of a gasp, and she brushes a stray lock out of her eyes with a breathless laugh as they drive off, dust cloud billowing behind them. "Yeah, I'm super. Let's get something to eat."

 

"My father introduced us," she starts off with as the bartender sets them down a beer each, enough lubrication for her to choke out the real story of how she met Wilmer. Working down in Texas like she said, but _my dad owed Wilmer money_ and _Wilmer helped me pay his hospital bills after he died_ isn't close to the fairytale she sold him before.

It takes one shot of tequila for Demi to say, "I really thought I loved him." A second to say, "He wrote me every day, you know. More than you write Olivia, if you can believe it." A third to say, "I was pregnant, it made sense at the time." Then she slumps forward to press her forehead against the sticky bartop, next to the empty shot glass, and lets out the most tremendous sigh Nick's ever heard come out of a human being. "I thought he'd take care of me," she whispers. "I thought I wanted that."

He doesn't ask what she means by any of that. Not _I thought I loved him_ , past tense, or what Wilmer wrote to her about, if he struggled to convince her to leave the way Olivia has him, or what happened to the baby. There's no baby; Demi's sitting next to him instead of working the Wild West circuit; her ring—her entire necklace—is gone. Her father's gone. All her ties to Texas are gone. The collar of her blue blouse gapes a little, revealing the bare nape of her neck, absent the gold chain she's worn for years.

 _I can't do this without you_. Convinced he was going to walk away from her the way he did his family, and even at the time it sounded too close to _I love you_.

Stops himself from brushing his fingers against her skin, touching the beauty mark above the jut of her spine; settles for wrapping an arm around her shoulders instead, the way Wilmer did, but this time she leans into the hug.

_Please don't leave me._

"I never want to end up in the hospital," she says, words muffled by how she presses her face against his shoulder, "Not like Patrick. Never ever."

"You won't." A shiver runs down his spine at the thought. Or maybe at how her fingers curl into the material of his shirt. It's sweat-damp from the unrelenting Texas heat, her touch ticklish against his back, and before he can think, he says, "I promise you won't."

 

He forgets to mail his letter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spanish flu pandemic who? I don't know her.


	3. Chapter 3

"I want you to be my catcher," Demi says in late December. After Christmas, his third away from his family, and she went to the church services in town with him but was slow to bend her head at the right times. Not that it was his place to judge. Or notice.

Olivia always bowed her head at the right times, remembered the different hymns though her voice wasn't as clear as Demi's when she sang. Wonders if she'll have to learn new ones to fit in in California.

"I'm already your catcher," he answers, tucking his hands into his coat pockets as they walk down the bit of road where the snow's been flattened by truck tires. The tracks are filling in slowly as more snow falls.

She kicks a lump of ice, sends it skittering ahead as she says, "No, for real. Full-time. I was thinking…" Hooks her arm through his, for insurance against slipping, he thinks, until she says, "This year, just you and me?"

 

"Being apart the whole time… I can't do it, Nicky. Not for another year. I'm tired of that life." Olivia wiped away a tear with the grace of a movie starlette, and he didn't need to ask what life she meant. He knew exactly—somewhere new every day, new faces in the audience every night, new routines every year, new injuries, new risks, over and over again forever.

"I…" Her apartment in Santa Barbara is bigger than a train car, no question, but the idea of stepping outside and seeing the same thing every day; seeing the same faces; going to the same places; working the exact same job day in and day out… "I'm not," he said.

She looked down and away, an elegant turn of her neck, and comparing her to a movie star wasn't far off. Scouted by a studio producer during her act one night, and she'd already been in three flicks by the time they sat down to talk in her living room. "Why-"

"Not yet," he said before she could start in on the questions he couldn't answer. "I'm not ready to give it all up yet," and they both know he meant _not ever_ , which is was good as _not for you_.

 

"A double act? I thought you liked being the headliner," he says instead of immediately agreeing, but he's already picturing the poster, _Lovato_ and _Jonas_ taking up equal space. He's just as established as she is—at least his family name is. Been behind the scenes for too long, and he's not getting any younger, and isn't this what he wanted so badly?

He can feel it when she shrugs one shoulder. "It's a snore. People expect so much, want you to make appearances and do interviews for local rags. Same questions over and over. This way I can shift all the work onto you. You did all the important stuff last year anyway, and it worked out… mostly alright. Our receipts were good anyway."

"Half of it worked out 'mostly alright,' anyway," he murmurs. She's right about their take—it was the reason Management had made no effort to intercede in their bickering. One of the most popular acts in the big tent, and they'd never missed a show, never hinted to the crowd how dissatisfied they were with the act or each other.

Now, staring down the drift-flanked road, he can see a better version through the veil of glittering snowflakes. A new act, a more prominent role, and he knows how good she can be in the air when she tries… "I'll do it if you agree to try the triple somersault. Not _do_ , just try."

Has to stop when she does, suddenly, peering up at him. Snow falls off a tree branch to the left of them as a bird alights, squawks, lifts off again. "You think I can do it," she says finally, and it isn't a question but he treats it like one anyway as they start walking again, slower.

"If anyone can," he says, and then adds, light as the ice crystals dusting them, "And you have to cool it with the drinking. If it's gonna be just us."

"Ugh," she says, sagging against him, her whole body dead weight for a second as he smirks. " _Fine_. You're such a wet blanket, Nicky, it's amazing I put up with you at all," and he can't disagree, especially not when she says, equally careful with her words as he was with his, "This time no fighting. Don't get all surly and withdrawn if things don't go your way, okay? Talk. Use your words."

Her arm is solid against his as he says, "No repeat of last year's mistakes."

"New mistakes only," she says with a cheeky grin, reaching up and brushing snow off his shoulder.

 

She wasn't kidding about the division of work. Just like last year, he works with the seamstresses on new getups; the band on music selection; the crew on lights. And—just like last year—he loves it.

"You're so bossy," she says, arms crossed as he circles her, rethinking her costume for the third time that _day_ , all his effort devoted to not fixating on how the dark ends of her recently-shortened hair sweep against her neck. She likes it; he doesn't. They both know who'll get their way in the end. "Has anyone ever told you that?"

"You're the first," he mutters. "Congratulations." Maybe ruffles? It's missing something. Taps his knuckle against his lip, flipping through memories of countless other costumes he's seen in his life the way Demi pages through magazines until she snaps her fingers under his nose.

"Eyes up here, Nicky," she says with a grin, and that's the cause of his face warming as much as what he was staring at. "So, let me guess: more sequins. Wait, no-" Presses her fingers to her temples the way the psychic does, eyes crossing as he snorts. Snaps her fingers again. "Ruffles."

"If you hadn't cut your hair," he says, for the tenth time that day. Almost manages to make it sound like a complaint.

 

"Now I won't have to bother pinning it all up," she'd said after bouncing into the practice tent the previous afternoon with her hair bobbed. "All the girls wear it like this," as she twisted a loose curl around one finger, smile faltering when he'd just stared.

"I didn't notice," he said faintly. Should've been able to reach out and tousle it the way he would a sister's, but he couldn't manage it. A half-hearted complaint about having to rethink her costume was the most he'd been capable of at the time. Still.

 

"You could use a trim too," she says, darting a hand out to tug at a lock of his hair, grin here-and-gone as he bats her hand away.

"Yeah, yeah. Later." Mumbles it as he turns away, puts his back to her no matter that there's a screen between them when she changes, and if he listens for the sounds of a zipper sliding down, fabric rustling, it's only to figure out how long it takes her to get it all off. Only because he's been toying with the idea of costume changes, like what Olivia used to do mid-act.

"After practice, right?" Back in her regular clothes, tunic dress buttoned higher than the neckline of her costume plunges, concealing what he'd been so baldly staring at. "Am I right or what?"

"Always," he says, taking the silken leotard from her to pass to the seamstress. Definitely another layer of ruffles, but that can wait until later. Until after they spend a couple of hours in the practice tent, just the two of them and one of the other aerialists to man the line as they work, and for all that she joshes him about how lazy she is on the ground she's anything but lazy in the air.

Because in the air, content though she is to let him take the lead on every other aspect of the act, anything he says is reduced down to humblest suggestion rather than order. She's the flyer; he's the catcher. No forgetting that the tricks are hers to turn, and he doesn't resent his role when it's her on the other side of the tent. But the falls too are hers to take—more than ever with only the two of them, no one to help her get back to the freely-swinging trapeze bar.

 _How about_ and _what if_ and _would you_ become the most frequent words out of his mouth, though he gains the most traction by daring her. Tempting her with his boldest ideas, combos or numbers anyone else would shy away from. Launching a double somersault over the trapeze bar instead of from under it; a mid-air flip from ankles to wrists; a triple somersault followed by a triple twist.

"What would be _really_ bonkers would be doing this over a crowd instead of a net," she calls to him one day, when they're struggling to figure out why she can't finish the triple somersault in time for him to catch her. Sitting on the bars across from each other, swinging back and forth like a couple of kids, and she's kidding when she suggests it but-

He massages his hands and considers the practice tent, pictures a gaping crowd below them instead of the net as she starts to laugh. A deep belly laugh that messes up the smooth gait of her swing, and he squints at her.

"Oh no, forget it," she says, shaking her head. "Nope, no way. We're not in Germany, they don't let you get away with that kinda thing here."

"Maybe we should go to Germany then," jumps out of his mouth before he's really ready for it, but she waves it away the way she did his earlier idea so there's no danger of her catching onto how, for a split second, he was completely serious.

"Enough daydreaming, back to work," she says, standing up on the bar, legs straight as she begins to work up some serious speed, determination erasing the years and baggage so that she's sixteen again, happy and calling to him, "C'mon, Mr. Jonas, let's try it again."

 

By March the triple somersault is a source of obsession for both of them. They leave it out of the exhibition, not even attempting it—there's enough in their act to dazzle even veteran circus folks so that it's not missed. But this year there's no distractions to their work. No Olivia, no Wilmer, no late nights out or reasons to fight, just the two of them and the trapeze, and he hasn't slept so soundly since he was a child and still believed his parents when they said he was doing exactly what God intended for him.

Runs through Ringlingville in the morning turn into laps around the big top once the season starts. Discussions over train food about timing when they're traveling, exercises in the practice tent when they're not. Demi stretching as he checks the net, the ropes for the line. All part of a routine that feels like nothing so safe because it's just them, and any one of their tricks could land them in the hospital or worse. No matter that every performance goes off without a hitch, he can't let the applause roiling seventy feet below go to his head any more than he can let a single rope go untested. Not with Demi taking her bows on the platform opposite him in her elegant white leotard with its sapphire blue ruffles and ribbons, only smiling and waving because he caught her when necessary.

So he checks and rechecks, the memory of her mouth against his coming at him fast one morning when they're in Jersey, _I can't do this without you_ , and now she really can't. No one else could possibly take his place, match their synchronicity. _I want you to be my catcher. Just you and me._

 _I thought you'd catch me_ , she's said more than once in his dreams. Lying on the net below him—which he's also dreamt of more than once, to his endless embarrassment—but last night her body was bent one way, head twisted another, and she sounded like his mother when she whispered, _Why did I trust you?_

"Can we get going already?" Hands planted on her hips, Demi kicks up a dust cloud as she taps her foot while he checks the stakes holding up the net for a third time. The summer heat, powerful even so early in the day, makes her cranky. "I'm growing old here," she says. "Soon I won't be able to walk, let alone climb up that dumb thing."

Stuffs the memory—the dream—down deep like clothes into an already-bulging suitcase and says, "Sorry for being so cautious with your _life_ ," to her over-the-top grumbling, but he can't feel guilty when she pulls off the somersault only for him to drop her. Hadn't gotten a good enough grip.

Hanging upside-down to watch that she lands alright, he sees how she shakes one arm out, knocks her fist into the line, and she lets out a yelp of annoyance. "I hate this thing, I'm taking it off." She still pauses as she unbuckles the belt, as if sensing his disapproval. "It's messing up my rotations," she says with a distinct whine, and he rocks back up to sit on the bar, wipe a trembling hand across his sweaty forehead rather than argue with her.

It's good that he doesn't bother because the next time she throws herself off the trapeze, legs pulled in as tight as she can, he catches her after three full rotations.

"What did I say?" Her smile is brighter than the spotlights they train on her during night shows; it dims slightly as she stares up at him. Grows sweeter. "You have chalk on your face," she says.

"I'd ask you to wipe it off for me but…" They're still swaying like a pendulum through the air, and their exchange—though brief—means she can't make the jump back to her own bar. He could pull her up, or she could climb him-

"Just let me go."

His hands tighten around her wrists; she squeezes back.

"The net's right there. I know how to take a fall." Squeezes his arms again; relaxes, lets go, but she's never been too heavy for him. Her sigh is a gust of warmer air in an already-warm tent; her hair's in her face but neither of them can brush it out of the way. "Nick, you can't hold me forever," she says with more humor than he thinks the situation merits.

 _Why not?_ But he can already feel the ache in his hands, the strain thrumming through his shoulders, legs, and maybe if they weren't at the tail end of practice-

"On three," he says, and counts, and doesn't look away as she drops, curls like a cat to land softly on her side and bounce up to her feet.

 

Demi keeps picking up the telegram from Ringling and reading it aloud to him in her best ringleader voice as if they hadn't both memorized the single line of text after a single read. "Congratulations, looking forward to seeing triple in New Jersey-"

"At least someone's coming," slips out as he finishes his gin and reaches for the nearly-empty bottle on the table. Their best show yet followed by Ringling's message, and Demi had grabbed his arm, dragged him away toward the train as the rousties finished packing up. _Don't be such an old man, let's celebrate_ , and he'd gone with her, the applause still echoing in his ears hours later.

To the bar, where other performers had bought them drinks and tried to figure out the secrets to their act, rejected simple hard work in favor of some forbidden magic. To her private compartment, and he'd hesitated. Not at the mess—clothes tossed every which way, old magazines and books stacked on a chair. Swayed in the doorway as Demi bulled in, bottle in hand, _Get in here already_ , but at least her vanity was only covered in the odd stray telegram receipt and cosmetics, the bottles rattling faintly as the train speeds along. Not a single crumpled-up letter in sight. Not like before.

"If you just tried to talk to them," she says, tossing the telegram aside and sinking down onto the couch next to him. "Just bend that spine a teensy tiny amount," and pinches his cheek.

Her hand falls away when he shakes his head and refills his glass rather than look at her, sitting close with her elbow propped up on the couch back. "You don't get it," he says rather than try to explain to her. Her, a clichéd circus runaway, a self-made orphan of the circuit. Pointless to try to explain how reaching out to his family would feel like breaking first. Admitting fault. Admitting he needed them after all, and he knows that's what they're waiting for, and he won't do it. He did what they wanted for almost two decades, and that feels like long enough.

"You're all just stubborn, that's all it is," she says with a dismissiveness that rankles, moreso when she plucks his glass out of his hand to swig back the gin he went to so much effort to pour. "You're the worst of them all. Isn't that why you're a catcher instead of a flyer? I've seen you in the air, you could be just as good as me-"

"Gee, thanks," he says, taking his empty glass back with a frown, conscious for once of who has a room of their own and who shares. At least he still has the bottle, though some of the clear liquor slops over his hand when she jostles him.

"So what is it?" she continues. "You think no one else could do as good as you at the incredibly difficult job of _catching_ people-"

Sees all the times he's dropped her in the dark reflection of the windows that reveal the passing countryside. Hears his father's scream in the steady vibration of the train, that heartbroken yell as he swung empty-handed, his mother lying prone on the net below. Nick would've tried the trick himself if his mother hadn't insisted it be her. If she hadn't believed he'd catch her.

Yeah, the incredibly difficult job of having perfect timing, of holding tight and not letting go- "No one else _would_ ," he says before sucking the gin off his knuckle, gulping down the meager rest that made it into the glass. "The whole planet wants you to fail-"

"Nick-"

"I don't mean the audience." He sets the bottle down on the floor between his feet, shaking his head again, voice low as he says, "I mean the actual _planet_. Earth. Gravity. I-I don't trust anyone else to know how to fight that." Finds his glass empty again when he tries to stop the honesty from pouring out of his mouth; Demi's hand on his sleeve keeps him from reaching for the bottle again. Twists his arm around so his fingers close around the delicate curve of her wrist. "Not when I don't-"

"I trust you," she says before he can finish, _Not when I don't trust myself half the time_ , her grip tightening. Is she remembering him wrapping the life belt around her waist countless times? Checking the ropes? Her fingers press hard through the material of his cuff into his flesh, and he turns at just the right moment for her lips to catch his.

 _I trust you_ , he thinks she said, or maybe it was _I love you_ because she mumbles it against his mouth before kissing him again, and she draws her skirt up as she hooks her strong leg over his thigh. "I love you, Nicky," she says, straddling his thigh, practically in his lap, and he's amazed the glass doesn't pop in his hand from how he squeezes it when the ends of her hair brush against his face.

Leans away from her, slips his hand free from hers. "Demi-" _She didn't listen to anything I said_ pelts wildly through his mind, the thought frenzied as a clown on fire, as his breathing when she tries to kiss him again and he turns his face away. "I-"

"Don't lie to me again," she says, kissing the corner of his mouth, voice as harsh as her fingers are insistent on his shirt buttons. "Don't say I'm your family, your _friend_ -" and he isn't the only one who remembers the night their fighting stopped. "I don't want to be your friend anymore, I-"

"You're better than that." Drops the glass, hears it thump against the couch, bounce off, as he catches her hands. Pulls them away from his shirt, already unbuttoned to mid-chest, and sees her eyes grow wide as he says, "You're my partner. We're _partners_ ," and he makes the critical mistake of letting her go to brush her hair back out of her face, her cheeks flushing pink as his fingers skim her earlobe. "I can't risk what we have more than I already do every day."

They sit staring at each other as people walk down the corridor unseen behind them, as the train rocks steadily around them, as they hurtle over land from one state to another. Watches her reflection in the window and pictures her sliding off his lap, pulling her skirt down before she sits at the end of the couch. Maybe covering her eyes with her hand.

But she doesn't move at all. "I can," she says, and after a moment's grace she drops her hands back to his shirt to finish the job of unbuttoning it. Repeats herself, adds on, "I'm a flyer, I'm used to it," and for all the lotion she uses her hands are still rough as she drags them up his bare chest, and stupidly he thinks of practice. How she never gave up on something no matter how difficult. How she kept trying.

The smile she gives him as he sucks in a deep breath—fleeting, devilish, _familiar_ —is what keeps him there. A smile he's seen a hundred times before: after bad jokes, narrow victories, shared plans and secrets. Aimed squarely at him now as he fights the urge to squirm when her calloused hands sweep down his chest, over his nipples a second time.

 _I've got a new trick in my repertoire_ , that smile says, and he's seen it so many times before but he's never gotten sick of it. _Will_ never get sick of it, he realizes, no matter how many more times he sees it.

That smile means he never pushes her aside, never gets to his feet. He never bends over her to drop a kiss on the dark crown of her head, he never rebuttons his shirt. Never leaves her there alone to slam into the dirt.

Instead he catches her wrists the way he has all his life and pulls her in close, a motion as familiar as her smile no matter that they've never moved together like this before. But it's like touring, like every time she came back from touring abroad, and as she shrugs off her blouse he feels that same thrill he does every time she says, _What if we tried something else? Something new?_

 _I want_ you _to be my catcher_ , she said in the winter, and he remembers the fond way she'd dusted the snow off him, her laughter as he scooped some up to fling lightly at her. Hears that same laugh now as he wraps his arms around her. Knows it like he knows the scent of her hair, flowers and sweat—it surrounds him as he pushes his face against her neck, the solid weight of her body in his arms. Never more than he could bear.

"I'll take that risk every time with you, Nicky," she whispers into his ear. The warm puff of her breath against his skin makes him shiver, makes his heart pound the way it does when he's swinging upside-down in the air and she calls out, _Ready?_

"Okay," he says, pushing her back against the couch, her thighs bracketing his hips. "Okay." _Go._

 

"Here."

Paper crinkles as she shoves the telegram in front of his face; he wipes his mouth with the napkin before looking up from his breakfast, not knowing what to expect from her. Smugness, if he were being honest.

It's there, in the grin she's failing to repress—he pretends he isn't relieved—as she waves the telegram slightly. "You're the one who likes to remember everything. Stick it in your diary or wherever," she says, snagging a piece of his toast when he does take it.

Thinks about asking how she feels, if she's hungover, if she wants to… talk.

 _What's left to talk about?_ The edge of a hickey on her throat, peeking over the collar of her dress, says there isn't anything.

So he doesn't bother wasting his breath. Picks up his fork to finish the rest of his meal before she can steal it from him, and when she laughs after he taps her tricky fingers lightly with the flat of his knife to stop her he thinks, _Alright then_ , as other diners look 'round to find the source of the brilliant noise.

 

He's stretching out his shoulders before their evening show in Paterson, New Jersey, when Demi ducks around the heavy curtain that hides the backstage area from curious customers.

"Don't be mad," she says, eyes serious though she's doing a poor job of repressing a smile, and that's all the warning he gets before the curtain parts again to admit a woman he doesn't recognize, and-

"What're you doing here?" Drops his arm from where he'd had it pulled tight across his chest to stand tall before Joe, who scoffs.

"Uh, we're here to see you?" Joe glances over his shoulder at the willowy redhead who had sidled behind him, shy as a country mare. "What do you think we're- Ah," he says, understanding dawning in the form of a lazy smile as he spots Demi, standing off to one side and observing closely. "Suddenly everything makes infinitely more sense."

Demi gives him her best showstopper smile, throws in a coy wave along with some dimples. "Hiya, Joe." When she notices Nick glowering at her, her smile doesn't fade one watt. "Your face is gonna get stuck like that and they're gonna make you work with the clowns," she says, darting out a quick hand to pinch his cheek before she's out of arm's reach, taking the strange woman by the hand. "You're Sophie, right? C'mon, I'll get you some free popcorn while the boys fight it out."

Sophie's eyes flick in alarm from Joe to Nick as Demi drags her away. "Are they really-" before the curtain drops behind them.

The rest of the circus bustles around them, performers and rousties and animal-handlers all with something to do, somewhere to be, while Nick stands with his arms crossed and tries not to stare too obviously at his brother, but it's been years and it's harder than he expected.

Joe looks… happy. A spring suit for the early July weather, hair perfect as always, but there's a softness around his eyes that Nick can't quantify. And he's holding a misshapen stuffed dog.

"Did she win that or did you buy it outright?" Comes out challenging, but he has to tip his chin at the unfortunate animal when Joe only looks confused.

"I won it, actually." Snickers as he turns it around to properly consider it. "She thought it was a wolf- Don't laugh, she's English, she has no idea what a wolf looks like." Then the penny drops and Joe is all over outrage as he says, "Hey, what the hell do you mean by that? 'Did I buy it?'" And years of distance—of not talking, not seeing each other, not understanding and not wanting to, not _apologizing_ —disappears with a single shared look. A single joke. All past discord tucked neatly under a black top hat and magicked away.

"You couldn't shoot for love or money before," Nick says, uncrossing his arms and stepping closer, but he knows he's been proven wrong about the former by the way Joe looks fondly at the ugly toy. "So that's… Sophie?"

"Ask Demi, I apparently told _her_ all about it," Joe says as the not-too-distant audience applauds loudly, and he turns to leave, recognizing the cue as well as Nick does. One act over, quick tear-down and set-up, and Nick needs to get out there, check the net- "I'll see you after?"

Nick bites his cheek hard as he nods, and Joe drops the curtain, three short steps back putting him in hugging distance, and ten years ago he thought there was a limit to his tolerance for being squeezed by his older brother, but he's wrong. He's so wrong. It doesn't go on long enough, isn't tight enough, and he's wrinkling Joe's jacket by clinging on the way he is.

Laughter rolls over the audience like thunder, and he lets him go. Clears his throat. "Kevin-"

"Still in Wyckoff," Joe says, smoothing his tie, his hair with an unconscious motion. "You- Well, _Miss Lovato_ thought it would be for the best if I came alone," and before he's finished speaking of her the devil appears, the curtain swaying as she hurries back in.

"Okay, you're not pummelling each other, wonderful, now scram," she says, tugging at Joe's elbow, and déjà vu hits Nick hard enough to knock the wind out of him as they embrace, Demi's cheek pressing against Joe's as she whispers something to him before she gives him a gentle shove. "Go, she's waiting."

"You had us all pegged from the start, didn't you?" Joe calls back before he disappears behind the curtain, and Demi's all sparkle, from her brown eyes to her sapphire hairband to the ruffles over her hips. Even away from the spotlight, she sparkles.

"Are you mad at me?" Judging by how she wrings her hands, the question isn't entirely for show.

"I'm not mad at you," Nick says at once, and kisses her after a beat when he's certain he means it. And he does mean it. Every part of it.

 

There's a lot of noise in the big top. From the audience, eating and chattering and squirming in anticipation when they're not applauding, bleachers and temporary wooden boardwalks groaning under two thousand feet; from the band off to the side, flipping to the next page in their music books and playing them into the center ring. The snorts and muffled calls of out-of-sight animals; the tent itself, rocking ever-so-slightly because of a breeze. Breathing, he imagined as a child, the whole place breathing around them, a curious Goliath looming over the local Philistines.

Some of that noise drops away the higher he climbs up the rope ladder to the platform, but at seventy-five feet in the air there's new noises. The breeze outside sounds more like a strong wind, judging by how the roof wavers; the chalk bag lets out a puff of air as he claps it against his palms; the rigging of the trapeze creaks as he grasps the bar.

"Alright?" Demi's inaudible to the audience below but he has no trouble hearing her, and he calls back an affirmative.

Grips it tight and swings out over the great emptiness above the net before he inhales sharply and folds himself at the waist to hook his knees on the bar, roll up to sit. Flashier than his father ever started, but their whole routine is about flash, and the maneuver gives him an extra chance to test the bar's ability to bear weight. Hoping that if it were ever going to fall it would do it then, at the beginning, with just him on it.

The music below changes pace, becomes more jaunty, and that's the signal to pick up the pace. Rocks back and forth, as enthusiastic as any kid on the playground looking to shoot the moon before he tips over backwards, catching the ropes with his legs, the bar braced against the backs of his thighs.

Across from him, Demi gives her typical wave to the audience before grasping her own bar. A slight hop and she's off, feet together and neatly pointed as she swings towards him. An opening pirouette to test her trapeze as much as to excite the audience.

"Ready," she calls to him from the platform after remounting it, and then she jumps a second time at his shouted _go._

The whole routine takes around four minutes. A double pirouette, then a one-and-a-half backwards somersault that isn't anything special except for how he catches her by the ankles first before she flips up in mid-air for him to grab her wrists. The applause pools up around them like Niagara Falls flowing in reverse, Demi laughing breathlessly before he lets her go to return to her trapeze with a single twist and tidy remount onto the platform.

Then comes the double somersault followed by the double twist that made her famous. Old hat for her now but a reliable crowd-pleaser, a tease of what's to come, and the audience alternates between palpable silence where all Nick can hear is the wind rushing past his ears and bone-rattling applause with every trick they turn out successfully.

The backend pullover is perfect as usual, their most polished move. Demi swings out from the platform, pumping her legs for momentum before hauling herself up and over the trapeze, the bar pressing against her hips. She's off like a shot when he signals her, their hands locking around each other's wrists with all the ease of friends passing in the street. No time to ask if she's alright, and no need—she gives him a single squeeze, _I'm fine_ , before he flings her into a double twist, and she catches the bar for the fourth time.

He sits up after, breathing hard and fast, the blood rushing from his head back down to his feet, and he can't help but grin at the thought of Joe and Sophie gawking somewhere below. Looks over his shoulder at Demi setting down the riser for the added height she requires for the triple.

"Ugh, the only problem with a double act," she'd complained countless times, "Having to do your own set-up." Fixed the riser between the support bars towards the back of the platform before she stepped up onto it, bounced on her toes, the flexible wood springy under her weight.

A ritual she repeats as he watches from his place thirty feet away; he can imagine her trembling faintly as she waits for him to get ready. Remembers her younger, sixteen and standing next to him on the board, excitement he'd misinterpreted as fear making her shake. _Nervous energy_ , she'd said, her smile beautiful and fleeting like August rain over a dry Oklahoma plain. Gone faster than he's moving now, swinging back and forth, the air a deafening _woosh_.

"Go," he shouts to her as soon as he's back in position, voice sounding thinner than normal with gravity dragging at him, and he stretches out his arms, hands open. Waiting.

Sees her in flashes as he maintains pace: her leap off the platform, her strong legs tight together to sweep back as she works up the kind of speed that would put a racehorse to shame. Her leap off the trapeze just as she starts to swing back towards him, letting momentum carry her forward. Somersaulting through three full rotations in mid-air before her hands snap out to grab his wrists, and he's there just in time. They've practiced too much for him to be anywhere else. For _her_ to be anywhere else.

 _I'll do it next time, I promise_ , she said, holding out her pinkie, long hair wavy over her shoulder.

 _Don't be scared_ , she said, lips brushing against his ear as he held her on the train platform.

 _You think I can do it,_ she said, arm hooked through his, breath a faint cloud before them.

_No one else could do as good as you at the incredibly difficult job of catching people-_

She slips.

 

"So it's a half turn, then a backward swing into a straight front somersault?" Denise frowns, staring past Nick, and he's certain the next words are going to be _not a chance_ but his mom is full of surprises. "Let's try it," she says with a grin.

Everyone speaks at once but she ignores it all to smile at Nick, who only said, " _Really?_ "

"Uh huh." Clasps his shoulder, squeezes it gently before she pats his head, ruffles his hair. Always makes him feel like a little kid when she does that, but he doesn't mind it so much at the moment. "You're right, we should update our routine." Looks past him again to where his father stands with his arms crossed, Kevin beside him and mirroring his disapproval. "Try something new," she adds.

"I'll catch you," Nick blurts out before the great debate can restart. His face is hot when he repeats himself; only one man catches his mom, and it's never been him.

"I don't think-"

"It's my idea, you'll be my responsibility," he says, voice steady as he interrupts his dad, resolve hardening as Joe coughs off to the side and turns away. _Probably covering a laugh, the jackass._

"Nick-"

"Paul, it'll be fine." Denise ruffles Nick's hair again, smiling warmly at him. "He'll catch me."

 

 _Every time, Nicky_.

The audience gasped as she fell; the breathless silence was the only reason he could hear the creak of the net. The net he'd checked and rechecked before every show, and it holds as she lands on it. Flat on her back, limbs spread wide to distribute her weight evenly the way she'd been taught as a little kid. _Like making a snow angel,_ she said once in a mocking tone of voice with a complimentary roll of her eyes before she continued, _As if I knew what the hell a snow angel was, growing up in Texas_.

Bounces once and she's on her feet, smooth as though the fall had been planned, and the applause is sudden as a storm surge as she takes a bow. He's still swaying in the air above her, arms outstretched and useless, and when she points up at him he knows what she'd say if she thought he'd hear her from seventy feet away.

 _That's your freebie_.

He crosses his heart with two deliberate motions and points back down at her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Routes taken from the Circus Historical Society's website for Ringling Bros. and Ringling-Barnum dating 1913-1921, although I played pretty fast and loose with locations at times. I'd link them but the site is b u s t e d now for no reason I understand.
> 
> Tricks and jargon sourced from [The Trapeze Net](http://www.flying-trapeze.com/), which is a very cool site with lots of videos.
> 
> Inspiration for the Jonas family act in general came from the Flying Codonas, who were [amazing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kJHLWszqJM). When Nick considered performing over the audience instead of above a net? [1925 was a wild year.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Braw_n5Bpzk)


End file.
